She’s twenty-four. She’s twenty-four and I am thirty-three and I find myself putting on my best fitting shirts, my nicest shoes, and combing my hair in that aloof manner that means I really do care about how I look, so much so that I am trying my best to not make it seem like I give two rats or a fuck about my appearance.

I call her Pajarita, spanish for “Little Bird” despite the stern wording she used when she told me she wasn’t one of my wounded fowl. That’s what she calls them; wounded birds. Those little, helpless, broken-winged creatures who come to me to be fed and taken care of and who eventually end up flying away before the night falls and I’m left with nothing but a pile of feathers.

“You don’t get to fix me, Matt.” She says. “I am not one of them. I can fix myself.”

I believe her. I believe her because when she has been where I am. She has seen the person she cares about most traipse down a path that eventually kills them. She has seen the dregs and the droves and the fascinating darkness that ensues in each of them. She sees it in me.

“You should come with me, ” She says. Meaning overseas. Into Thailand, Africa, Southeast Asia, Yemen, New Zealand, where ever her international law degree takes her. “I want nothing more than for you to come with me and write.” I tell her I will. I tell her I want to be near her. I kiss her lips and she kisses like a tiny bird.

“Fitting,” I say aloud though she doesn’t hear me. We talk about how she wants to kill me. How her huge German Shepherd isn’t to be toyed with. How her clothes fit her. How that small area right below her stomach is sensitive and every time I touch it she sighs and shifts her hips and presses them against me.

I wonder if she thinks about me when she masturbates. I wonder if, despite her Ivy League background, she is just toying with me. I wonder why she feels strangely familiar and soft and firm and every time I touch her it is though I have woken from a deep sleep.

“I miss you.” I tell her and do. “I can’t wait to see you,” I say and I am not lying. “I want you. Te queiro, por favor,” And I am speaking to her in Spanish because that is her first language and I want to feel her tongue on mine; I want to feel the firm thrust of her hips against my thigh.

It’s 3:30am and she is rubbing my chest and I am asleep and for the first time in almost five months I feel as though the person next to me isn’t a stranger.

I’m tired. The kind of tired that takes days of sleep to combat and when you finally get up to eat or drink or smoke a bowl, the days warm blues have turned into long oranges and purples.

The fridge is empty and everything sounds tinny and far away.

The other night K. came over and we finished a bottle of wine and ate cherimoya with silver spoons. We sat on the floor and discussed her vibrator, her brothers, affectionately known as “Yale Chris, and “Jail Chris,” and I pressed a single finger into her shoulder to color test her sunburn.

“You need to give yourself permission to feel how you feel,” she would later say to me. “I’m not testing you, but you’re testing me,” she would also state and suddenly her radar would scramble.

3:33am. The witching hour, and everything that is calm and quiet feels strange and foreign. I can’t stop feeling broken and odd. Perhaps this will pass, but for now there is something inside of me that I can’t quite touch and I wish that I could pull it out.

Once again, it’s the tenth of the month and I’m sure my grief will kill me. Four months now. Today I will remember. I listen to the songs that remind me of you and let the knot in my throat unwind and tell myself that you were the most beautiful thing to behold; that I was simple and imperfect and loyal and straight like a Texas highway. I can’t feel my fingertips because I’ve finished off a six pack and smoked a joint and I wish this didn’t hurt as much as it does. God, how it hurts. I wish I could let it go and keep it from causing so much anguish but instead I’ll have another and sleep until I feel normal again.

We all die. I just wish I could have come with you.

I remember sipping coffee in the infant hours

You made a whole pot just for me

And I thought “I’ll never drink that much by myself.”

You made it anyway

And I thought

“Maybe, instead of water, you used drain cleaner,

Because perhaps I made you angry,”

If you did, it wasn’t enough

I barely tasted it

And I thought

“Why is my love so broken that it only sticks to those

Who can’t taste its sweetness

Like spoiled honey remnants

Clinging to the inside of the jar?”

Why is my love so faulty

That it gets wasted on sycophants

Or punched and bullied like a featherweight

Or cut down with a haggard edge

I slurped my coffee

The coffee you had made me with your little fat fingers

And I imagined you biting your lip as you measured out

The perfect amount of grounds

To offset the taste of cyanide

Whispering to the almond amaretto cream

And I thought

Maybe that’s the point of love

To be sharp and oblong like an indian arrowhead

To be chipped out of hard flint and smell like the dirt

To be honed perfectly to kill

We fell asleep early. Her, lying on her side, a pillow to prop up her neck, and her fingers searching for mine. I dreamt of snakes. Thick ropey rattlers, long pythons, sharp vipers and hooded cobras. In a basement I fought them while they tried to snap at the skin under my shirt. I remember feeling their scales against my skin, as though there was no boundary between us. I remember the feel of the bite, the thick poison racing conquest through the arteries; warm and cold at the same time.

We slept. I rolled in my sleep and she met me with her hips. I felt the sheen of sweat on her skin, and rose to adjust the thermostat. I tugged the knotted blankets over my shoulder and off of my feet. I wrapped an arm around her midsection and she kissed the tips of my fingers.

The clock beamed at me, green like vapor and it was 5:55am and I woke craving coffee and silence. She is so loud in the morning, her fingers slamming drawers and pouring cereal into a large blue bowl. She talks constantly, enough to drown out the low hum of the television. Enough to outweigh the news station and the pretty weather girl with the teased Dolly Parton hair and the skin tight top, belted black around her middle.

I drink my coffee black, from a black cup, and think about how cliche that sounds. “I like my coffee like I like my women. Black and bitter.” I like my coffee like I like my women; warm and moist, stiff and hot, assaulting my senses so that I can feel awake again.

She grabs a pillow, presses it to her stomach and walks it to the molasses colored leather couch. She stops talking when I wave her off and kisses my cheek. She laughs nervously and I tell her that he only comes to visit when I am alone. That when I rise early there is a verse in my head that I need to dispose of. There are things I need to put down on paper. Her fingers trace my shoulder and I turn away.

Today, we’ll run errands and pretend to be domesticated deer.

We are both anything but.

1. I refuse to be someone’s contingency plan. I’m worth more than that.
2. I am not an emotional support system. I have my own shit to deal with.
3. Because fuck you
4. If this is not what you want, then I’m out of here. I’d much rather put my time and energy into someone who wants me above everyone else.

I told her tonight that I had a date for valentine’s day. It was a cliche. A valentine’s day date that was really just my attempt at filling a void. We stood in the kitchen poised over a sink full of dirty dishes and she explained to me how he never flossed his teeth. She told me how she drank more and more so that she could fuck him and not feel empty inside and when I told her that I had plans for next week she turned into a church mouse.
“Who are you going to be with?” She asked.
“I have a date.” I said. And instantly regretted it. Earlier, as we pushed huge trash cans full of recyclable bottles up an eight foot ramp, she had skipped along side me and put her hand on my back and when we stepped in from the cold we both gave a distinct shiver.

The wine was cheap and as red as honesty. Two glasses was all it took for the barrier to break.

She sobbed in a small pile on the floor and I could hear her and all I wanted to do was break through the door and feel my mouth on her mouth because living the rest of your life without knowing what it feels like to kiss someone you love is always excruciating and terrible.

I didn’t though. I burst through the door and held her in my arms while she sobbed like a sullen child.

Never Have I Ever:

Met a girl who makes me feel both calm and alive all at the same time.

Or it could be the wine.

Or it could be both.

(via humansvsrobots)

Never reveal a character’s name in the first few sentences. Let them simmer for a while.
Let your audience place themselves in the shoes of the person you’re describing. Use texture. Color. Smell. Intrigue. Let the audience absorb the character and build a slight lust for them. Then, and only then, give them a name worth lusting after. A real name.